New Year, New Classes

2011 is fully underway as this week I have started teaching my new classes at both of my schools: Mzumbe Secondary and Mongola Secondary.  I’m really excited to get a fresh start and put a lot of what I’ve learned so far about teaching into good use.  I’ll be quite a bit busier for the next few months, but I’m sure the time will fly by and I hope that it will be just as rewarding as it has been so far.

At both of my schools, I’ll be teaching Form III students at the O (Ordinary) Level.  I’ll be teaching them English language for the first term of their year, which will be until my departure date in May.  At Mzumbe I have 3 “streams,” or classes, to teach and at Mongola I have 2 streams, which I had last term at Mongola as well.  I will be teaching all classes three times a week, for a total of 5 40-minute periods.  At both schools, my classes are fairly large, but at Mzumbe they are considerably smaller.  Those classes only have about 30-35 students per class, whereas at Mongola there are about 60 students in each class.  It will be interesting to experience the contrast of not only the class size, but also the ability level of the students.  At Mzumbe, the students are some of the best and brightest in the country, so they’re a lot more eager in class and understand English at a higher level than most students at their age.  At a community school like Mongola, the students are not as comfortable with English, so it will definitely be a challenge.  While all of the Form III students I will be teaching are intermediate English speakers at best, between the schools, the classes and also between all of the students in each class there will be a wide variety of skill level, which will certainly bring a unique set of both challenges and rewards in the classes.

Since I only have a few more months left in Tanzania, I was eager to take on a lot of classes so that I can leave knowing that I had a good impact on my schools and my students.  At both schools they are certainly in need of English teachers, so I am more than happy and eager to help out teaching the Form III students.  It is certainly a different experience teaching O-Level students, as opposed to the Form V students I was teaching for the good portion of the past year, but I’m glad I’ll have the experience of teaching students of all levels.  Now that I have my new classes, I’m anticipating the rest of my time as a teacher here in Tanzania, and really looking forward to further developing my skills as a teacher and helping out my community here at Mzumbe as best that I can in and out of the classroom.